Red Phoenix

by Larry Bond

  And that was why the Politburo had finally adopted his suggestion that it adopt no clear-cut position. Instead, it would ship Kim Il-Sung the weapons and supplies he’d requested while officially terming the war “an internal affair to be resolved by the Korean people.” And the Premier planned a quiet chat with the American ambassador to help the U.S. understand his position. Such behind-the-scenes diplomacy might help avert an American overreaction to China’s logistical support for Kim’s invasion. Or, at any rate, so he hoped.

  The compromise, while unsatisfying, was at least susceptible to change should the battlefield situation itself change. And the Premier’s technically trained engineer’s mind regarded that flexibility as a virtue in and of itself.

  He glanced at his watch. It was time to turn and head back to his office for his scheduled meeting with the Rural Electrification Committee. With an effort he shoved the considerations of war and international politics out of his consciousness — making way for thoughts about small hydroelectric dams and coal-fired power plants.

  China had made its decision. Now it would await events in South Korea’s snow-covered hills and frozen rice paddies.

  3RD MARINE DIVISION HQ, OKINAWA

  Major General Andrew Pittman, USMC, handed the FLASH message from Washington to his division ops officer, the J-3. A frown creased his weather-beaten face and crinkled the bushy, black eyebrows that were his trademark and most prominent feature. His Texas twang was even more pronounced than usual after a full night without sleep. “Well, what do you think, Brad? How much longer before we’re packed up and ready to ship out for Pohang?”

  Tall, stick-thin Colonel Owen Bradley Strang scanned the priority message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and handed it back to his boss. He ran a hand over his shaved scalp, absentmindedly ruffling long-gone hair. “Breaking every rule and shortcutting every procedure the way we’ve been doing it since the commandant called?”

  Pittman nodded.

  The colonel shrugged. “We’ll have the two infantry regiments, the First Amphib battalion, the Headquarters battalion, and the Third Recon aboard ship with all their gear within the next twenty-four hours. The artillery, Divisional Support Group, and the Seventh Commo battalion will take longer. Peleliu has been rerouted from Subic Bay, and once she’s in, we’ll have more space for the heavy equipment.”

  “Best guess, Brad.”

  Strang looked out down the truck-choked road leading to the harbor. Storm clouds had rolled in on Okinawa toward midnight, bringing with them gusting winds and periodic rain squalls. Even with the sun up, the Navy’s harbormaster had been forced by poor visibility to keep the furnace-white arc lights along the quays burning. And in their glare, Strang could see more than a score of gray-painted Navy amphibious ships pitching and tossing in heavy, gray-green seas.

  As the trucks carrying troops or equipment crawled through the traffic up to the harbor’s main gate, Marine and Navy officers in rain slickers and camouflage ponchos assigned their cargos to specific ships. The division would sail from Okinawa combat-loaded, with vital stores and gear dispersed so that losing any given ship to enemy air or sub attack wouldn’t cripple the Marines before they could reach the battlefield.

  Strang turned back to his commander. “With the weather playing up like this, it’s going to take us at least seventy-two hours to get everything saddled up.” Even that was a miracle made possible only by constant practice and detailed prewar planning. Strang thanked God for the annual Team Spirit exercises they’d held in South Korea.

  Both men fell silent as a rain-laden burst of wind rattled against the window.

  Then Strang cleared his throat. “Of course, we could always break the division up. Sail now with most of the troops and let the heavies follow on afterward.”

  But Pittman shook his head. “That’s a no go, Brad. I talked to the admiral earlier this morning. The Navy’s classified the whole Korea Straits a high-threat area, and he doesn’t have enough escorts available to adequately guard two convoys.” He drummed his fingers on the desk, beating out a martial-sounding tattoo. Then the general looked up. “Okay. Seventy-two hours it is.”

  He scribbled a hasty reply to the Joint Chiefs’ message and handed it to Strang for coding and transmission.

  The colonel had his hand on the doorknob when he heard Pittman’s voice from behind him. “One thing, Brad.”

  Strang turned. “Yes, General?”

  “No screw-ups. Anything not aboard in seventy-two hours is gonna get left on the beach. And I don’t want to leave anything on the beach, clear?”

  The colonel nodded. “Aye, aye, sir. I hear you loud and clear.” The Marines were going to war, and Pittman wanted every rifle, every grenade, and every piece of equipment in there with them.

  TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, FAIRFIELD, CALIFORNIA

  Northern California’s low, rolling hills were also being soaked by cold winter rains — rains thrown by a Pacific storm moving inland to dump snow on the High Sierras.

  The rain puddled on Travis Air Force Base’s extra-long, reinforced runways, taking on an oily sheen in the flood-lit night.

  One puddle on the main runway vaporized, cast into a million infinitesimal droplets by the backblast from the four mammoth jet engines of a Military Air Command C-5 transport plane. The C-5 rolled on in a thundering roar as its engines reached full thrust and it picked up flying speed, lumbered heavily into the air, and arced gently over onto a westward course.

  The plane’s engine noises faded, their place taken by the howling, high-pitched screams of other C-5s and C-141s, as they taxied onto the slick tarmac for takeoff or waited motionless while troops and gear of the Army’s 7th Light Infantry Division were loaded on board. A ceaseless flow of buses and trucks from Fort Ord — the 7th’s stateside base — rolled off Highway 80, through the main gates, and onto the field to add to the long lines of combat-ready soldiers waiting their turn to clamber aboard a troop carrier.

  The airlift to South Korea had gotten underway as soon as a significant number of the division’s scattered troops and the MAC plane crews could be recalled from their Christmas leaves. Many men were still enroute, caught by the crisis at home in cities and towns all across the U. S. As they trickled in, haggard and wan, already sapped by jet lag and family worries, the nonstop cycle of loadings, takeoffs, and landings continued. It would go on without respite for another ninety-six hours.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Big Picture

  EIGHTH ARMY FIELD HEADQUARTERS FORWARD, NORTH OF SEOUL

  McLaren walked into the tent almost unannounced. A few people near the door noticed his entry and started to straighten to attention, but he waved them down. Everyone was too tired and too busy to waste time with Regular Army bullshit.

  McLaren was tired, too, but not as exhausted as he had been earlier. Once they’d got the Army’s field HQ up and running, he’d bugged out for a four-hour nap in his command trailer. He’d long ago learned the old soldier’s lesson that you should grab sleep whenever and wherever possible. It had been drummed into his head as a company and battalion commander in Nam.

  He scanned the worn faces of his staff. It was obvious that he’d have to start enforcing the same kind of sleep discipline on them. He didn’t want men too tired to think straight trying to run his army’s logistics or write operations orders.

  McLaren saw Hansen in the far corner and caught his eye. His aide nodded and moved to the front of the large, wood-floored tent that served as the HQ’s Operations Center. Hansen stepped up onto a low platform backed by wall-sized maps.

  “Gentlemen, the general would like to get this afternoon’s brief underway.” Officers around the tent looked up at Hansen’s words and moved to find chairs.

  McLaren sat in the front row.

  Normally briefings were set-piece affairs, the presenters in their best uniforms, following a ritual older than they were. Everyone afraid of making a mistake in front of the big boss, but wanting to do their best, too. The ro
om was always as still as a church, except for the briefer’s voice and the whirr of a projector showing carefully prepared slides.

  That kind of protocol had gone right out the window when real bombs started dropping. Now there were people running in and out with printouts and other scraps of paper. Everybody was in cold weather gear and BDUs, mottled baggy uniforms that were worn in combat. Everyone wore a sidearm. And now a chance to sit down meant a chance to eat.

  A paper plate materialized in front of McLaren. Corned beef sandwich, chips, and pickles. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t put anything in it since early last evening. He picked up the sandwich and bit into it, chewing wolfishly. Some of his own fatigue fell away at the first taste.

  Still chewing, he glanced up at the short, portly officer waiting to kick the briefing off — Colonel Logan, his J-2.

  McLaren didn’t like the expression on Logan’s face. He was worried, a little wide-eyed. Well, let’s see what we’ve got to be worried about, the general thought.

  “Good afternoon, sir. I’m going to start with a short rundown on what we now know of the North Korean drives and their order of battle.” Logan looked down at his notes, took a deep breath, and said, “Finally, I’ll try to indicate likely courses of enemy action over the next several days.”

  In other words, McLaren thought, he’s gonna try to predict what the bastards will do next. Good luck, Charlie.

  Logan walked over to a map that had been taped up on the tent wall. It showed all of the DMZ and the upper third of South Korea. McLaren leaned forward, eager to get the big picture. He had been out of circulation for four hours.

  “North Korean forces are making attacks all along the DMZ. They’ve had their greatest success in the west and have gained the most ground there.” Logan tapped the map with a pointer, indicating an area running from roughly Tongjang in the west to Ch’orwon in the east. “This is flattest terrain and the easiest to attack over, especially with the rice paddies frozen. Their assaults along the eastern portion of the DMZ haven’t been backed by the same level of firepower or Special Forces support. We’re evaluating those as holding attacks — intended largely to pin down our troops in the east.”

  McLaren nodded to himself. No surprises there. South Korea’s geography closed off a lot of North Korea’s offensive options. The mountains and razor-backed ridges running down the eastern half of the Korean peninsula formed a natural barrier to ward off any would-be attacker.

  Logan continued his dry-mouthed recitation of the available facts. “In the west, we face two main attacks. One launched down Highway One by the North Korean Second Corps, and the other moving down Highway Three along the Uijongbu Corridor. That one’s being spearheaded by the enemy’s Fifth Corps. Both corps have been heavily reinforced. We’ve identified elements of at least two armored, four mechanized, and eight infantry divisions in these attacks.”

  There were gasps around the room. Neither enemy force had been listed on the Eighth Army’s prior OB charts as containing more than half that strength. Somehow the North Koreans had been able to double the number of their troops along selected portions of the DMZ without alerting either American or South Korean intelligence.

  “The enemy’s Fifth Corps drive has already captured Yonch’on. In the west, they’ve pushed up to the outskirts of Munsan.” Logan looked soberly at the assembled officers. “In other words, the North Koreans are already across the Imjin River.”

  McLaren scowled. That was bad. The Imjin had always been viewed as a principal backstop for the allied forces deployed along the DMZ. Prewar staff studies had estimated it would take the North Koreans a minimum of two days to push that far south. They’d done it in less than sixteen hours.

  And Munsan was a quarter of the way to Seoul. Seoul was the center of it all. It had a population of eleven million in a country of forty million people. Damn the geography that placed the political, cultural, and economic center of the country within forty kilometers of a hostile border.

  Logan finished describing the known positions and strengths of the attacking forces. They were pushing hard, using Soviet steamroller tactics — attacking everywhere until they found a weakness, then concentrating everything at that point. McLaren listened to his J-2 with half his mind. The other half was busy considering options. The North Koreans were showing they could play the Soviet ball game well, demonstrating a dangerous grasp of speed and offensive firepower. But there were weaknesses, too. Weaknesses he and his troops would have to be ready to exploit. Soviet tactics weren’t too flexible. If they could find ways to seize the initiative, to disrupt the smooth unfolding of the North Korean plan, they should be able to throw the enemy commanders off balance.

  McLaren filed the thought away for future consideration and turned his full attention back to the briefing. The J-2 had moved on to a discussion of the new North Korean equipment they’d identified so far. One of Logan’s assistants came up front with a slide screen and another turned on a slide projector. The first image was a fuzzy black-and-white shot, so blurred it was only a collection of angular shapes. It was an airplane.

  “This was taken from the videotape of a fighter that fought last night. This is a MiG-29 Fulcrum, a Soviet design that has been recently added to the enemy inventory. It’s a very advanced aircraft, a match for our F-16s. But that’s not all. The Soviets have provided the North Koreans with other weapons.”

  He put up another slide. In color, it showed several tanks against a typical Korean winter landscape. “These are T-72 tanks, one generation advanced over the T-62s that we thought were their newest models. It has a bigger gun, better armor, and is much faster than the T-62. This is a complete surprise to us.”

  A buzz of conversation swept through the crowded Operations tent, and Logan waited for it to die away before continuing, reacting to the irritated disbelief he’d heard from his fellow staff officers: “Yeah, I know.” He looked at the general.

  “Sir, I am very embarrassed that we didn’t know about this new equipment in the enemy’s inventory. We had some information from ROK Army Intelligence that the stuff was present, but it was disregarded because we couldn’t confirm it by our own sources. We’re reevaluating our data, but we don’t know what other surprises we may have overlooked.

  “On the bright side, they can’t have too much of this new equipment. Therefore, we can expect that it will be reserved for important attacks, and its appearance may signal enemy intentions.” McLaren saw several of his officers making a note of Logan’s observation.

  The lights came back up.

  “Okay, Charlie, whip out your crystal ball.” McLaren tried to make his voice lighter than he felt. He’d always disliked senior officers who let their pessimism infect those around them. He was determined not to make that same mistake.

  “General, there can’t be much doubt that the North Koreans intend to carry this thing through all the way. They’ve committed an enormous percentage of their available military resources to this operation — their whole Special Forces outfit, and a sizable chunk of the regular Army, Navy, and Air Forces. And satellite data shows heavy rail traffic heading south from the second echelon encampments around Pyongyang, Wonsan, and Hamhung. Clearly, they’re trying for a knockout punch before our reinforcements from the States arrive and before our reserves here complete their mobilization.”

  Logan laid his map pointer dead center on the large, orange blotch that marked South Korea’s capital city. “Now. Seoul is the first big prize, and the NKs have two choices — either head directly for the city or use their two assault columns to envelop and surround it.” McLaren agreed with his assessment. It wasn’t brilliant military insight, but he was probably correct. The North Koreans weren’t going to be subtle. They didn’t need to be. They had numbers and momentum on their side.

  Brigadier General Shin, deputy J-3 for the Combined Forces Command, took Logan’s place on the platform. His chief, Brigadier General Barret Smith, was still enroute back to the ROK
from a Christmas leave in Japan. Shin’s precise, cultured, perfect English painted a bleak picture of the situation the American and South Korean troops faced.

  Casualties in first-line units had been heavy — more than thirty percent in some battalions. And North Korean commandos had inflicted significant losses on a number of extremely important rear-area units. The troops facing the enemy thrusts down Highway 1 and Highway 3 urgently needed reinforcements, replacements, and resupply.

  For example, the South Korean brigade holding Munsan, a strategic road junction, was under attack by at least two enemy divisions with heavy air and artillery support. After nearly a day of continuous fighting, its three infantry battalions were down to half strength. The brigade’s commander and most of his senior staff officers were dead. Antitank and small arms ammunition were running low. Without immediate assistance, the senior battalion commander reported that Munsan would fall within four to six hours.

  “Unfortunately, gentlemen” — Shin’s face was impassive — ”we don’t have any help to send. Not that can get there in time to matter. All our available forces are fully committed.”

  Similar situations were being duplicated all up and down the line. No out-and-out North Korean breakthroughs had been reported so far, but it could only be a matter of time before their tanks started tearing holes in an ever thinner allied defense.

  Additional American ground troops were on the way, but they couldn’t possibly begin arriving in significant numbers for several days. The same thing went for South Korea’s hastily mobilizing reserves.

  McLaren shifted in his chair, pushing his empty paper plate off to one side. “What about the air situation? We need replacement aircraft and pilots almost as much as we need troops.”

  “F-15s from Kadena, Japan, will be arriving shortly, General. We’ve been notified by Washington that other U.S.-based squadrons will be airborne later today. They should be available for combat missions within twenty-four hours. Your Navy also reports that two carriers, Constellation and Nimitz, are on the way. Nimitz is the closest, but her attack squadrons and fighters won’t be in range until the day after tomorrow.”